There has been an interesting online debate involving James Hansen, and Joe Romm (from climateprogress.org and the Center for American Progress). After Hansen released his essay Tell Barack Obama the Truth — The Whole Truth (also reproduced by Barry Brook at BraveNewClimate.com), Romm responded with a blog post An open letter to James Hansen on the real truth about stabilizing at 350 ppm. Hansen’s strategy is to aim for a target of 350 ppm or less with an approach based on a carbon tax where 100% of the dividend is returned to households; a halt to construction of new coal-fired power plants unless they store the CO2 that they produce; and an R&D program in technologies that some will find controversial. Romm’s approach is to aim for a target of around 450 ppm with an approach based on a “WW2-style effort”. Both of their essays are worth reading, as are the comments threads.
Since then, Hansen has given a speech to the American Geophysical Union that summarises his “Target CO2″ paper (and is even scarier than his “Target CO2″ paper). He has also written a letter to Michelle and Barack Obama, which has gotten some media attention in Australia because he stated that “Australia exports coal and sets atmospheric carbon dioxide goals so large as to guarantee destruction of much of the life on the planet”. This isn’t the first time Hansen has commented on Australia’s climate policy, he also said in October that Australia’s approach to climate change “if adopted globally, practically guarantees destruction of most life on the planet.”
January 12, 2009 at 2:28 am
Another prescription for saving life as we know it and the planet as a fit place for habitation by our children and coming generations could be to focus more of our attention on the global challenges presented to the human family by the overpopulation of Earth by the human species.
One of the world’s finest scientists, Dr. James E. Hansen says, “Tell Barack Obama the truth – the whole truth” about human-driven climate destabilization.
Perhaps here and now, we will find that other great scientists, the likes of Jim Hansen, Barry Brook, John Holdren and Joe Romm, will speak out loudly, clearly and often to tell Barack Obama the truth – the whole truth about the apparently unforeseen and unfortunately unwelcome scientific research of human population dynamics as essentially similar to the population dynamics of other species; about absolute global human population numbers as a function of the world’s food supply; about human population numbers being determined by food availability; and about daunting threats potentially posed to the family of humanity and life as we know it, even in these early years of Century XXI, resulting from the skyrocketing growth of human population numbers worldwide.
For repeated references to the good science of Russell Hopfenberg, Ph.D., and David Pimentel, Ph.D., please click on the links below. Comments from one and all are invited.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
January 20, 2009 at 5:08 am
Many thanks to Joe Romm and Jim Hansen for speaking out loudly, clearly and often. Millions of voices are needed now more than ever before to support your efforts.
A jeremiad follows concerning wasting time and keeping silent while woefully inadequate leaders of the human community promulgate policies and initiate large-scale corporate activities that recklessly overheat and relentlessly ravage Earth and its environs.
My not-so-great generation of elders will likely be remembered as the perpetrators of the most perverse, self-serving silence in human history. No other generation has taken so much from this good Earth, threatened the very future of its own children and given so little of themselves to preserve life for coming generations. Photographs of us will disclose both our corpulence and hollowness.
Although the disclosure of truth is unsettling, hiding the truth from the human community could be a monstrous example of human-driven foolery, one that could soon lead to a colossal ecological wreckage.
To suppress the truth by conscientiously substituting whatsoever could somehow be true with willful silence is tantamount to the commission of a pernicious lie.
A widely shared and consensually validated determination among people with knowledge to maintain their silence, when remaining silent betrays intellectual honesty, conceals the truth and thwarts courageous action, is the most dangerous of all global threats to the family of humanity, life as we know it and the preservation of Earth as a fit place for human habitation.
From this perspective, perhaps we can begin to apprehend the actual, most formidable enemy of future human wellbeing and environmental health.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
http://www.panearth.org
January 21, 2009 at 2:07 am
Leadership of a generation passes into history on this day, 1/20/09.
It appears that a single generation, my not-so-great greed-mongering generation, will be remembered for having first recklessly plundered and then ravenously consumed the lion’s share of all Earth’s limited resources. No generation before mine, and certainly no generation to follow, will behave so arrogantly and avariciously because the resources to do what my generation has done will have already been devoured and, therefore, unavailable to future generations. In the pernicious process of global plundering and conspicuous per capita over-consumption, many too many leaders of my generation will also have allowed the unhealthy pollution of the environment, the unrestrained depletion of natural resources and the unconscionable mortgaging of our children’s future. My generation’s leaders will have lead us to threaten the children and coming generations with the likelihood of dangerous ecological conditions…a situation for which my generation is responsible but for which my generation refuses to take responsibility. Many leaders in my generation have determined to “pass the buck” to the children, come what may. So grave and unfortunate a situation cannot longer be ignored just because the leading perpetrators of this ominously looming ecological wreckage choose to remain willfully blind, hysterically deaf and electively mute when called upon to account for their (and our) behavior.
If I had to put this colossal tragedy in a single set of sentences I would speak out in this way,
“Never in the course of human events has so much been given to so few consolidators of great wealth and power, who then did so poorly by everyone else and everything else but themselves. A tiny minority of supremely greedy, self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe in my generation have directed the human community toward the extirpation of biodiversity, degradation of the environment and the depletion of natural resources. The fitness of Earth as a place for habitation by our own children has been put at risk. The abject failure of so many of my generation’s leaders to assume responsibility for such incredible arrogance, poor judgement and stupendous wrongdoing is somehow not quite right and, at least to me, difficult to tolerate in silence.”
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1 …
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
http://www.panearth.org